5 Looking into the Future on JAS Gripen Spillovers
5.6 Automobile Safety Systems as a Swedish Export Product
A single military aircraft represents a considerable investment for society and the human capital investment in a combat pilot represents a not negligible economic value even in comparison to the value of the aircraft for which s/he is responsible.
Pilot safety therefore was an early concern at Saab. A military aircraft was designed with two safety considerations in mind. The aircraft should be easy and safe to fly and be designed, and to the extent reasonable, incorporate devices to save the pilot in case of an accident. The first ejection seat ever was developed for, and installed in the Saab J21 fighter aircraft already in the 1940s. The J 21 was pushed by a propeller mounted at the rear of the aircraft. The ejection seat was launched by a gunpowder-powered “cannon” The cannon was needed to catapult the pilot above the propeller in case of an accident. Even so, of the 661 Saab 29 “Flying Barrels”
fighter jets manufactured between 1951 and 1956, 190 crashed and 99 pilots were killed. Such numbers are totally unacceptable today.
Already in 1951 a special section at Saab was made responsible for safety designs on the military aircraft. The two-seater version of the supersonic Saab 35 Draken demanded more effective solutions. As the first combat aircraft in the world, toward the end of the 1960s, the Draken was equipped with both a rocket-launched and a cannon-launched ejection seat. To prevent the pilot from getting stuck in the cockpit when ejected, an air cushion was installed to push his arms close to his body at ejection.
Already in the late 1950s, Saab safety engineers understood and applied the principle of the three-point safety belt and that the pilot should be straightened up and pulled hard into his chair in case of an accident. Gunpowder-activated retractor belts were installed on the Draken combat aircraft at the end of the 1950s that straightened up the pilot and fasted him securely in his chair. The pilot and his parachute furthermore were fastened to his chair with a three-point belt.
Cockpit design and instrumentation is another important aspect of both aircraft maneuverability and safety.
Saab’s development of simulation methods to optimize structural designs, and especially the balancing of thin and light but strong lattice structures and the thickness of the hull came in handy for Saab’s parallel development and manufacturing of auto-mobiles. When Saab (together with Linköping University) acquired a Cray supercom-puter for its aircraft design work the aircraft engineers also helped the automobile people during the 1980s to design, for its time, very safe automobile structures that absorbed the impact of automobile accidents through collapsing in a “structured” way.
As the first automobile in the world, Saab could offer side-impact protection in 1972.
The Saab aircraft and automobile engineers also experimented with transferring the Gripen fly-by-wire steering system and head-up instrument display to the Saab 9000 automobile model. This transfer, however, turned out to be too expensive. The sensors, on the other hand, that were used to release a primitive airbag to hold in the legs of the pilot when, in case of accident, the catapult seat was ejected, eventu-ally found their way to the Swedish automobile safety firm Autoliv. Autoliv cur-rently operates two development and research centers, one being located in Saab’s Linköping. When Autoliv acquired Nokia’s automotive electronics activity in Motala it became rational to concentrate to, and expand in Linköping because it was much easier to recruit qualified personnel there.
ABS brakes were defined in the Gripen specifications already around 1980 and were installed in the landing gear when the first deliveries took place 1988. Also before that, the last 37 Viggen aircraft manufactured had ABS brakes.
Because of this, Saab Automobile and Volvo Car not only became pioneers in automotive safety. As early and competent customers for safety solutions in cars, Saab and Volvo also influenced the establishment of a specialized automotive sub-contractor industry in Sweden, its most prominent member being Autoliv.
5.6.1 Case 17: The Swedish Automotive Safety Industry and Autoliv
The close contact between military aircraft development and automobile manufac-turing in Sweden, both within Volvo and Saab meant that safety considerations became an early concern in Swedish automotive industry and among its subcon-tractors. As Saab engineers moved between aircraft and automotive workplaces over internal and external labor markets they brought safety awareness with them (item 1 in Table 1, See page 39). (With time, however, influences began to move in both directions. The airbag, for instance, that is mounted in the rear cabin on the two-seater version of the Gripen is there to prevent glass fragments from the cock-pit roof from hurting the pilot if ejected, and is an airbag based on the same prin-ciples as the one Autoliv developed for the Saab 900 automobile). In general, however, a flow of technical safety solutions developed within military aircraft dif-fused to the Swedish automobile industry and its subcontractors.
152 5 Looking into the Future on JAS Gripen Spillovers
Autoliv was founded 1956 on a new two-point safety belt technology made in a polyester material with a high energy-absorptive capacity.14 This belt almost imme-diately became the standard in Sweden, and in 1958 Volvo was first in the world to offer this two-point belt as standard on all PV 444 cars. At the same time, Volvo had initiated the development of a three-point safety belt (Nilsson 2003:28). Nils Bohlin, who had worked with ejection seats and safety systems at Saab aircraft during the 1950s was recruited by Volvo as a safety expert. He is said to have
“invented” the three-point belt that was installed on all Volvo cars in 1972. As mentioned, safety belts had, however, always been installed on combat aircraft and aircraft safety systems developers understood the three-point principle early, and that the pilot had to be both straightened up and be fastened tightly to the seat to be protected when ejected from the aircraft. The retractor belt for the Saab 37 Viggen was developed in the beginning of the 1960s. Already during the 1950s, Saab 32 Lansen had a gunpowder-activated retractor belt from the USA. The retractor belt did not arrive at the automobile industry until the early 1990s.
In 1967, Autoliv had developed a new three-point belt with a retractor that adjusted the length of the belt automatically to fit the position, the size and the body shape of the driver of, or the passenger in the car. Svensk Tryckpressgjutning in Vimmerby that had been founded by a Saab trained mechanic (Sven Hjelte) was asked by Autoliv to fix the retractor belt which tended to jam. The solution had to do with the precision with which the parts were cast. Hjelte’s firm solved this prob-lem and is still a subcontractor for Autoliv. The competitor Gränges Weda acquired Autoliv in 1975 and when Electrolux acquired the entire Grängesberg company in 1989, Autoliv became a subsidiary of Electrolux. Svensk Tryckpressgjutning also became a subcontractor to STIL that manufactured retractors for Volvo. Electrolux had acquired STIL in 1984 and all these activities were gathered under the Autoliv cap. Autoliv, however, was not a natural strategic part of Electrolux. Even so, the Electrolux management had long-term ambitions for the company and enacted a number of complementary acquisitions. In 1994 Autoliv was introduced on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and the firm continued to grow through acquisitions. In 1997, Autoliv merged with US Morton Asp under the original Swedish name Autoliv. Morton contributed with an improved airbag technology and Autoliv Inc.
was introduced on the New York Stock exchange. Today Autoliv is the global leader in automotive safety with one-third of the world market of its products and 34,000 employees in 2009. However, only 5% of manufacturing takes place in Sweden, 80% of the owners are American. The company headquarter is however still located in Stockholm.
The history of automotive safety has left several traces that lead back to the Swedish military aircraft industry. The traces are of three kinds. We have (1) the introduction of safer automobile structures and of (2) other complementary safety devices such as safety belts and air bags.
The most important contribution however is (3) the systematic attention to safety that was developed in the engineering of military aircraft at Saab that diffused to the Swedish automotive firms Volvo and Saab Automobile because of their close relations with Saab Military Aircraft. The automobile producers in turn, acting as
customers, imposed the same concerns on the growing automobile safety subcon-tracting industry. Specialist automotive safety firms were established and Autoliv soon became the most prominent one. That transfer of safety thinking and safety technology was largely a matter of people with competence moving between jobs.
We know that engineers with experience from safety work at Saab went to automo-bile industry where they could apply their experience about how the products should be designed to be safer. Saab Autmobile “borrowed” engineers from Saab’s safety group on a routine basis.
Sensors for airbags are developed by Autoliv and Svensk Tryckpressgjutning is one of the subcontractors. The airbag is very demanding on the quality of the energetic material (the “gunpowder”) and of the small sensors that blow up the airbag reliably and in no time.15 This pyrotechnical technology was developed early in conjunction with the missile development at Bofors in Karlskoga. Bofors Bepab was established as a separate company and acquired in 1995 by a group of engineers at the company. Bofors Explosives (as the company was later called) developed this pyrotechnical technology further for Autoliv. This activity is now integrated with the Karlskoga based part of the French, Finnish, and Swedish-owned company Eurenco that develops both civilian applications for Autoliv and military applications for the missiles of Saab Bofors Dynamics.
Bofors also developed a mechanical sensor for a side-impact protection device for cars together with Autoliv (Fransson 1996:365). Combitech AB, a Saab consult-ing subsidiary (see Case 23), has integrated the safety-critical systems on the Volvo S80 model.
A specialized competence bloc in signal analysis, image recognition, and microwave communication has evolved around the weapons development of Saab and Saab Bofors Dynamics in Linköping. Sense and avoid technology at sea and between aircraft to avoid collision is a Saab specialty that has been derived from the Gripen systems project. It is no coincidence that Autoliv has located its automotive elec-tronics research (at Autoliv Elecelec-tronics) in Linköping. Collision alert and avoidance systems are developed there on the basis of military technology. Autoliv develops heat-sensitive cameras together with Flir Systems (originally a military technology that was developed within Swedish AGA). This automotive alert system has already been installed on the new BMW 7 series.